The Quality of Food Advertised to Children
If you have kids, chances are they watch Nickelodeon: the cable channel's programs account for 47 out of the 50 top children's shows on television today. Those programs reach into movies, books, magazines, and websites, while the characters in those programs are used to market food products and are made into collectible toys.

Rationalizing their way into a larger pants size
12,000 Americans participated in a telephone survey between January and March, 2006. Conducted by Thomson Medstat, a healthcare information solution company (Thomson Medstat Research Brief, "Lifestyle and Obesity"; July 2006), the respondents were asked their height and weight, then a number of lifestyle questions, including how often they exercised vigorously, ate fast food or snacked on sweets, and whether they thought their overall eating habits were healthy.

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Magazine
articles on weight loss and their impact on teens

Studies of adolescent
behavior indicate that about 10% of all high school students
are trying to lose (or at least maintain) weight by using diet
pills, powders or liquids. About 9% of boys and 14% of girls have fasted
for 24 hours or more, and 12% of girls use risky weight-loss methods such
as vomiting or taking diuretics or laxatives to lose weight.
These behaviors have been linked in some studies with frequent reading
of popular magazines, with their focus on an idealized level of thinness.
Can the magazine articles that are specifically about weight loss or dieting
be linked to these behaviors?

Researchers
in Minneapolis, Minnesota, designed a study called "Project EAT (Eating
Among Teens)" to assess the impact of reading weight-loss articles
in popular magazines on the individual teen's weight-loss behavior five
years later (Pediatrics 2007;119(1):e30-e37). In the initial portion of
the study, undertaken in 1999, 2,516 students in grades 7 through 12 (about
ages 13 through 18) answered a written survey and had their height and
weight measured (privately). The survey included the following questions:

How
often do you read magazine articles in which dieting or weight
loss are discussed?

During the past 6 months, how important has your weight or shape
been in how you feel about yourself?

Have you done any of the following things to lose weight or keep
from gaining weight during the past year? (With check boxes for
such behaviors as eating more fruits and vegetables; exercising more;
fasting, eating very little, or skipping meals; vomiting; using laxatives;
or using diuretics)

Questions
were also asked about binge eating, how satisfied the teen felt about specific
body parts, any symptoms of depression, and their general level of self
esteem.

Five
years later the teens were recontacted by mail and answered a similar set
of questions. After comparing the two sets of questionnaires, the researchers
found, quite simply, that the more often a young woman read magazine articles
about dieting and weight loss, the more likely it was that she would be
dieting or engaging in deliberate weight-control behaviors five years later.
She was a little over twice as likely to engage in extremely unhealthy
weight-control behaviors such as vomiting or using laxatives or diuretics
as those young women who reported "never" or "hardly ever" reading
weight-loss articles in magazines.

Boys,
on the other hand, showed no clear association between weight-loss behaviors
and magazine reading over the five years of the study.

What
this means for you

Clearly the media exerts a great deal of influence
on a young woman's perception of herself. The researchers in
this study recommend that parents limit a young woman's access
to these magazines and discuss with her the realities of the images portrayed
in them. While that's certainly worthwhile, I think your best long-term
strategy is to make a healthy lifestyle a family affair. Arm your children,
male or female, with healthy eating habits and regular exercise as a normal
part of life and they'll be healthier and happier throughout
their lives.